Code of Federal Regulations Title 29. Labor § 29.784.142 Meaning and scope of “canning” as used in section 13(b)(4)

Section 13(b)(4) exempts any employee employed in the canning of aquatic forms of animal or vegetable life or byproducts thereof from the overtime requirements of the Act. As previously stated, it was made a limited exemption by the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949. The legislative history of this section in specifically explaining what types of activities are included in the term “canning” and the antecedents from which this section evolved make it clear that the exemption applies to those employees employed in the activities that Congress construed as being embraced in the term and not to all those engaged in the fish canning industry (Mitchell v. Stinson, 217 F. 2d 214). Congress defined Report No. 1453, 81st Cong., first session 95 Cong. Rec. 14878, 14932–33) as follows:

Under the conference agreement “canning” means hermetically sealing and sterilizing or pasteurizing and has reference to a process involving the performance of such operations. It also means other operations performed in connection therewith such as necessary preparatory operations performed on the products before they are placed in bottles, cans, or other containers to be hermetically sealed, as well as the actual placing of the commodities in such containers. Also included are subsequent operations such as the labeling of the cans or other cases or boxes whether such subsequent operations are performed as part of an uninterrupted or interrupted process. It does not include the placing of such products or byproducts thereof in cans or other containers that are not hermetically sealed as such an operation is “processing” as distinguished from “canning” and comes within the complete exemption contained in section 13(a)(5).

Of course, the processing other than canning, referred to in the last sentence quoted above, is now like canning, in section 13(a)(5).